PCSP partners with the Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence

The Presbyterian College School of Pharmacy, in partnership with the Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence are working together to advance a national initiative for Medicare patients focused upon  prevention of adverse drug events and potential adverse drug events. The Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence (CCME) is the CMS funded Quality Improvement Organization in both South and North Carolina.

This national initiative, HRSA’s  Patient Safety and Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaborative (PSPC 5.0), is one of many national projects being supported by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The population of focus for this Collaborative is chronically-ill Medicare patients taking multiple medications supporting therapies for diabetes, anti-coagulation and psychiatric conditions. Improvement in therapy outcomes for each patient is tracked on a monthly basis and reported to the CMS through HRSA’s national database.

School of Pharmacy students Kelly Niedzwieki, Stephanie Fazzone, Stacey Turner and Molly Dougall are PCSP 5.0 Project Team Leaders for effecting inter-professional health care teams and therapy progress improvements with Medicare patients in Upstate Long Term Care facilities. Faculty member Dr. Charles Shively, PIC for the PC Community Care Pharmacy and Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics along with Marilyn Brooks, CCME Care Improvement Specialist, are South Carolina’s project liaisons for this national initiative.